100 Days of Wonder – #6
I love this picture of me from our first trip to Florida. It’s nearly 19 years ago. It was our first full day and there was a whole load going on. I didn’t have any frame of reference or know what to expect. I hadn’t given Disney, theme parks or any of it any real thought, I was tagging along for the winter sun. We had walked up Main Street USA and I was in awe, overwhelmed and struggling to make sense of it all. There was a sort of wonder but it was tentative and not joyful. But then we came to the Winnie-the-Pooh ride and area around it and my brain had something to work with. Pooh bear and friends I knew, I’d been in and out of their stories and on adventures with them for years. Even now I remember a sort of relief and joy washing over me as I finally let my brain let go of reality and jumped into the 100 Acre Wood (trying not to bounce, didn’t want to upset Rabbit) and immersed myself in the story. Disney World, it turns out, is is just allowing yourself to jump in and out of stories. But there’s a lesson here for teaching (and for any sense making work): Our brains need something to work with. We need some sort of frame of reference. Something familiar (a base camp?) from which we can set off into new adventures of learning. Without the security of something familiar, things quickly become scary and disconnected – they don’t make sense. The familiar within the new allows us to test what this new world, new story is all about before diving straight in or taking tentative steps out. Even after all these years and several trips, the Winnie the Pooh ride is still my favourite and it’s still my go to place for a moment of familiarity and calm but I also often picture it as an anchor point when I am trying to work out how best to teach something – I need to help students find their own 100 Acre Wood in the middle of the hundreds of stories I want them to learn about so they can go and safely and joyfully explore a whole new world (yes Disney Pun intended).
100 Days of Wonder – #4
If something is worth doing, it is worth doing right. Attention to detail and bothering with detail in the first place makes a difference to how people feel. I am utterly useless at attention to detail in the way it is generally used in the professional sense. I’m big picture and ideas not crossing Ts and dotting Is. I can’t proof read to save my life but I am good at the detail of life. I am good at doing the people things right and creating the space for their magic to happen. Seeing detail like the detail in the lamp makes me smile. Disney didn’t have to do this but they did. It reminds me to stop and think about what little detail might make someone smile today. How can I add just a little bit of pixie dust to someone’s day. Sometimes it was as simple as knowing a student’s name, thanking a colleague for their efforts or sending a text or email to check in with someone for no other reason than because you were thinking about them. I think about my friends and colleagues all the time. I’ll try pause more to let them know how amazing I think they are. Spreading a little joy really isn’t that difficult!
100 Days of Wonder – #1
I have Covid so I have been both bored and incapable of actually doing anything useful for the last few days. Yesterday, to cheer ourselves up, we booked tickets for Disney on Ice: 100 Years of Wonder for next spring and as it happens, today it is 100 days until we go on our next Disney Adventure. As a result I have been daydreaming, reflecting, thinking… whatever, about the idea of wonder and of escapism. In my induction talks to our new students I also talked about finding the joy in what we do, particularly when we are having a hard time. So as I have been drifting in and out of conscious thought staring at random stuff on TV and coughing my lungs out, I was trying to look for wonder and joy. Here’s number 1 of what may or may not be a 100 day series of finding them and using my Disney or Disney related photos to do so. Of course it is Disney based, that’s where my brain goes when it needs to either escape or is bored or needs cheering up. But in scrolling through photos and closing my eyes and mentally flicking through memories I have thought about so much more than Disney. So bear with me over these post, some will be about work, some will be about running, some will be about life. I hope some will make you laugh and some will make you think but most of all I hope they inspire us all to pause and find joy in the wonder of our lives. I remember the first time I saw Disney World fireworks. I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen anything like Disney World and I was already pretty overwhelmed after a day of having my mind blown repeatedly. I remember standing at the edge of a very busy Main Street USA. I remember that it should have been noisy but that it felt like I was in my own bubble and everything else faded into the background as I was completely in the moment. When I am trying to write or really focus on something, that’s the feeling I try and re-create. It’s both happy and joyful and completely focused. The Disney Fireworks can still do it for me. Here they are from our last trip.
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